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GPDA achieves unity with full F1 membership
The Grand Prix Drivers' Association has achieved unity for the first time in recent history to help its push for Formula 1 bosses to focus on improving track action.
Lawrence Barretto Jonathan Noble
Edited: Dec 13, 2017, 2:59 PM
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GPDA chairman Alex Wurz says the drivers' body has full membership of the F1 grid, which will in turn aid the drivers' bid to get their voices heard.
"The GPDA now has 100 percent membership for the first time in recent memory and maybe history," said Wurz. "So it was a very good year. F1 is entering a period of evolution, change and perhaps even a degree of turmoil.
"All the drivers recognise that they must be united and represented, in order to face that challenge and prevent any politics or fights for power from ultimately compromising on track performance.
"The drivers believe unity is fundamental for the sport's success."
Since taking over F1, Liberty Media has taken its time in assessing what areas of the championship need tweaking.
In a bid to boost the championship's profile, F1 bosses held a street demo in London, recruited boxing announcer Michael Buffer to announce the drivers at the United States Grand Prix and improving the off-track activities for fans at grands prix venues.
F1 CEO Chase Carey has also said he wants closer competition and better racing to "make the sport more captivating".
Wurz praised Liberty for following the drivers' calls for tweaks to the aerodynamic rules but called for the focus to remain to the cars and the track performance.
"The GPDA demands only that the sport remains the centre of attention and we want to hold everyone in the decision-making process accountable for their actions and decisions," he said.
"All adjustments to the sport should only be done and conducted in the best interest of the sport and not of any one individual, and this is what unites the drivers, this sheer will to keep F1 as the pinnacle of motor racing.
"We consider F1 as Sport, not show. A driver rightly so calls himself a sportsman and not showman, because its still about the most natural human aspiration - to go faster, higher, quicker.
"Great sport is what we love to see, if great sport is embedded in a suitably created show and race experience , that would indeed be good.
"If the sport sucks, everything around the sport itself is only expensive, inauthentic and semi irrelevant. We need on track competition, but not artificially created.
"We can't be naive about the situation which F1 is in, with its complicated governing rules and agreements between various key stake holders.
"Business decisions and political power fights have damaged the sport enough at vulnerable times over the last decade.
"But the GPDA has repeatedly said that the on track action needs to be better, more closely fought and authentic.
"As such, we are glad that Liberty and their technical research team follow the GPDA's suggestion from more than a year ago, where we wished for a less sensitive airflow concept of aerodynamic-related rules in order to be able to race closer."
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